Right on the dot at 5 PM, Capitals’ senior writer Mike Vogel reported that the Capitals extended qualifying offers to seven of the organizations ten RFAs: Philipp Grubauer, Andre Burakovsky, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Dmitry Orlov, Chandler Stephenson, Travis Boyd, and Liam O’Brien.
There’s one key player missing from that list: Brett Connolly. Prospects Darren Dietz or Cody Corbett were also not qualified.
#Caps issued qualifying offers to Stephenson, Grubauer, Burakovsky, Kuznetsov, Orlov, Boyd and O’Brien before 5 pm deadline today.
— Mike Vogel (@VogsCaps) June 26, 2017
According to Vogel, the Capitals are still negotiating with Connolly and expect to re-sign him.
The #Caps did not qualify Connolly, but are still negotiating with him and expect to sign him. The Caps did not qualify Dietz or Corbett.
— Mike Vogel (@VogsCaps) June 26, 2017
If the salary-strapped Capitals would have qualified Connolly, they would have owed the forward at least 105 percent of his $850,000 salary last year.
The current team must extend a “qualifying offer” to a restricted free agent to retain negotiating rights to that player. Qualifying offers are for one year contracts. The minimum salary for the qualifying offer depends on the player’s prior year salary.
Players who earned less than $660,000 in the previous season must be offered 110 percent of last season’s salary. Players making up to $1 million must be offered 105 percent. Players making over $1 million must be offered 100 percent.
- If the qualifying offer is not made, the player becomes an unrestricted free agent.
- If the player rejects a qualifying offer, he remains a restricted free agent.
- If the player does not sign before December 1, he is ineligible to play in the NHL for the remainder of the season.
The Capitals could have decided not to issue a qualifying offer to Connolly because, after estimating new upcoming contracts to Grubauer, Burakovsky, Kuznetsov, and Orlov, they wanted more flexibility to stay under the $75 million salary cap limit. The team also likely is exploring options to land a top-four defender after the loss of Nate Schmidt in the expansion draft.
Connolly, who scored a career-high 15 goals last season, is deserving of a much larger raise than the 105 percent he’s due and is eligible for salary arbitration since he’s played in the NHL for more than four seasons.
NHL salary arbitration is a tool available to settle some contract disputes. The player and team each propose a salary for the coming season, and argue their cases at a hearing. The arbitrator, a neutral third party, then sets the player’s salary.
Most players must have four years of NHL experience before they are eligible for salary arbitration (the term is reduced for those who signed their first NHL contract after the age of 20).
The Capitals could potentially be hamstrung by the single-season number an arbitrator rules for Connolly (though they could always walk away from it then), deciding it makes more sense to offer longer term and play a game of chicken before July 1.
